For at least five years, employment analysts have worried that too few workers will bring a crushing labor shortage to the doorstep of most small and mid-sized companies in the years to come.

It is a numbers game:

The nonpartisan Employment Policy Foundation projected on Labor Day 2002 that about 23 million new jobs will be created in the United States within the next 10 years. About half of those jobs will require a college degree or some advanced degree, the Washington, D.C.-based think tank determined.

The overall need - job growth plus retiree replacement - is for 18 million new baccalaureate degree holders by 2012.

But at current annual college and university graduation rates - 1.15 million baccalaureate degrees annually - the available new college degree holders will fall about 6 million jobs short at less than 12 million.

Translation? A big labor shortage.

But that was then - a month or so ago - a lifetime when measured against the rapid swings of this economy.

What has changed is the stock market. The bear market of 2001-2002 clawed through just about every 401K account, leaving investors slaughtered, skinned and twirling on a hot rotisserie.

Retirement nest eggs have become omelets, and there is no frying pan in sight.

The end result is that maybe the employment shortfall is not going to be so rough after all. Most people have put that retirement home in Arkansas on the backburner and will end up working longer than they had anticipated.

The crummy stock market means that the supposed labor shortfall may disappear altogether, according to analysts at Walker Information, an Indianapolis-based think tank and consultancy.

Walker predicts that 15 percent of all seniors plan to work past their age of retirement by 2010. There will be "a dramatic increase" in the number of people of all ages working longer. "If there is a silver lining in the loss of money in 401(k)s, it's for employers," says Marc Drizin, employee loyalty specialist for Walker Information.

"People with skills, with technical abilities, will have to work. That's not because they want to work but because they have to work. That's the difference between today and a year ago."

But expert opinions vary.

Ron Bird, chief economist for the Employment Policy Foundation, doubts that the stock market of 2002 is going to have any long-lasting impact on workers. Stocks are cyclical, he says. And generally their value increases.

"Cyclical is the magic word," he says.

"Historical trends suggest that we have every reason in the world to be confident that well-chosen portfolios of stock will rise in the future.

"It is too early to tell whether the immediate changes in stock value will have much of an impact on the serious labor shortage the U.S. is facing over the next 30 years."

The YWCA of Greater Cincinnati, in conjunction with a number of other local groups and companies, offers a conference tomorrow on the impact of domestic violence on the workplace.

The event gets under way at 8:30 a.m. at the Hyatt Regency call 241-7090 for more information.

E-mail at jeckberg@enquirer.com